


Is There a Lot of Money in Chess?

by SegaBarrett



Category: Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:27:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22658551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Freddie is interviewed by a high school student.
Kudos: 6





	Is There a Lot of Money in Chess?

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Chess, and I make no money from this.

The girl leaned forward and rapped her fingers against the door. There was a notebook tucked under her arm and a tape recorder in her backpack.

She rapped again.

“You won’t have much luck, I’m afraid.” She turned her head to see an old man sitting on the porch next door in a rocking chair. “He never comes out much.” The man rocked forward again. “People haven’t seen him in years. Used to be a chess champion, they say. People come around sometimes. Never answers. Lousy neighbor. Never rakes his leaves.”

She knocked again.

“He’s not going to come out,” the old man said again. “I remember when he first moved in. Used to start a whole bunch of chaos. We don’t need any more chaos around here.”

The door cracked open, almost imperceptibly, and one solitary brown eyes peeked out in the girl’s direction. 

“What do you want?” the voice barked. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Dequisha Moore,” the girl replied.

“What’s that?”

The girl raised her voice.

“Dequisha Moore. I’m a junior at Brooklyn High School.”

“Where’s that?”

The girl paused.

“Brooklyn.” 

The door creaked open a little more.

“You didn’t say what you want.”

“I wanted to interview you. For my school paper.”

The door opened just a slight bit further.

“For a high school paper? There surely must be more interesting things for you to write about. Like school vending machines.”

He opened the door and she positioned a foot on the wobbly step, putting weight on it as it threatened to break and send her down beneath the porch. 

“Come in,” he said as she crossed the threshold. The porch was half-rotted, covered in an angry orange carpet that did no one any favors. He opened up the internal door, next. Freddie Trumper was a man of many doors, and even more walls.

He took a seat on the couch and nodded. Finally, she was able to see him in the light, and it was an odd site – he was bearded with a dark beard and quite stocky, walking with a slight hobble as if the last few years had done a number on his balance.

“What do you want to know?” he inquired.

Dequisha smiled.

“Everything.”

***

“Is there a lot of money in chess?”

“What makes you ask that?” Freddie Trumper set a pitcher of ice tea down on a single TV table.

She looked around at the water stains on the walls.

“No reason.” She patted down the couch and took a spot. Despite the need for repairs, maybe even because of them, there was an odd homey feel about the whole place, like this was some kind of sanctuary for him. “So what made you interested in playing chess in the first place?”

“I don’t really remember. It just felt like it was always what I wanted to do. I must have started playing at… oh, eight or nine. And then it was all I could think about.”

“Did your family encourage you to play?”

She watched as he ran his tongue over the stubble under his lip, as if thinking about it.

“No… No, I can’t say that they did.”

She leaned forward, just a little bit more, letting their eyes lock as she tapped her fingers against the couch.

“I’d like to learn to play,” she ventured.

“Then what’s stopping you?”

She seemed to mull it over before countering with, “What’s stopping you from going back?”

“It wasn’t the same anymore… after…”

“After Florence Vassy?”

Freddie’s head jerked up, as if to attention. 

“I wasn’t saying anything about Florence,” he said quickly, defensively, and the girl smiled one of those self-confident smiles that teenagers always tend to get when they have worked out where some older person is most vulnerable and are going in for the kill, the more efficient, grown-up version of insisting on asking “why” every four seconds until someone goes completely out of their mind.

“But you were thinking about her. Everyone knows…”

“Who is this everyone, exactly?”

“Everyone knows that you two were the team to beat and that you quit playing chess after she quit working for you.”

“I didn’t quit because of her.”

“You know, Mr. Trumper… That’s familiar.”

“What is?”

“The smell of denial. It’s the same for a teenager as it is for… I don’t know, an old guy from the 1800’s or whenever you were born.”

Freddie Trumper rolled his eyes.

“I didn’t play chess against Abraham Lincoln and Chester A. Arthur, if that’s what you think.”

“The sideburns guy? Well, okay. But you’re avoiding the issue. Again. Should I write my article all about how you don’t wanna answer any questions about Florence Vassy and it’s because you’re a scaredy-cat.”

“A scaredy-cat?”

“What are you, five? No, I’m not scared of Florence. Hardly.”

“Then when was the last time that you talked to her?”

“Well, I mean, uh, recently? What did you mean?”

“Yes, recently! Like, have you talked to her in the past year?” 

Freddie hesitated slightly, and the student seemed to grasp on to that and cling for dear life. 

“Five years?” Another flash of silence. “The last ten years?”

“Yes! Ten years ago. When my daughter graduated college. Are you happy now? Has your prying paid off? She doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“You’ve got a daughter?”

Freddie heaved out a sigh of frustration.

“I do. Caroline. I try and keep her name out of the news.”

“What does she do?”

“She doesn’t play chess, if that’s what you mean. She writes for a small paper out in Connecticut.”

“Are you close?”

“She visits.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Listen – what was your name again?”

“Dequisha.”

“Dequisha – I don’t know what angle you’re looking to get from this, and I’m not really interested to find out. If you want to hunt down Florence, that’s fine – last I heard, Anatoly and her had a place in Long Beach. Might be a bit of a commute for a, what, fourteen year old?”

“Fifteen. A lot of airlines would let me fly.”

“I get it. I was taking trains to competitions by then.”

“Did your parents come cheer you on?”

The man looked away.

“…No.” He paused. “Anyway, I need to get back to… Cleaning.”

“No problem. I understand… this will be good.”

Dequisha rose from the chair and walked, letting the door slowly shut behind her. She reached in her pocket and took out her phone. Her finger scrolled, then hovered, and she let out a sigh before speaking into it.

“Yeah… Grandma. He’s here. You should come.”


End file.
